Archive for the ‘web 2.0’ Category

Now that everything is electronic and all apps and services are internet-based (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Flickr, YouTube, Google Docs and what not) I feel more certain than ever that I won’t lose my “stuff”. I guess most of my e-stuff from the 90s is gone by now. I probably had some of it on some 3.5″ back-up disks or old computers, but now – it’s gone. Disappeared. Disparu.

It got me thinking the other day when I was looking for an old Facebook wall chat- it wasn’t old old, just a couple of months – and I realized it was almost impossible to find. Whose wall was it on? Was it mine? Who was in it? Anyway, it took me well over half an hour to locate it scrolling through 40-50 pages (the one shown here is another one I decided to keep). It was really good, it made me laugh all over again and I decided I wanted to keep it. But then I found that the only way to really keep it, was to screen-shoot it and save it in my Dropbox. Now, how old-fashioned is that? And what if, in 5 years time, I want to find something from today… I would take me weeks to find it.

It begs the question: How far back do Facebook, MySpace, Twitter et al keep their records?

It also begs the plea: Can someone please launch the service “My Social Stuff”! What I want is something like this: When I read a wall chat I want a little icon next to it that I can hit and it’ll save that chat to my social stuff. The same thing with pictures, tweets, links – basically everything from social cyberspace that I want to keep.

In My Social Stuff I want a powerful Google type search engine, so I can find everything. Folksonomy so I (and my friends) can tag a chat “wedding speech” or “joke” for later reference.

Above all I want a virtual time capsule where I can keep and safeguard all my social stuff for many many years.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by one of the most passionate and well-informed airline observers, The AirObserver’s Blog, last week. It’s now online here. I talk about the challenges faced by traditional carriers and low cost carriers alike when dealing with digital natives (Generation Y and Generation Z). I would personally like airlines to put a lot more effort into understanding digital natives and coming up with more great initiatives like Southwest, Cathay and Virgin.